Saturday, February 28, 2009

Thursday, February 26, 2009

I've been relying on Norine to do all the image processing in Photoshop. She does such a great job that I didn't have a lot of incentive to take the time to learn the program. It was much easier to just let her do it all! ;) Seriously though, I've been wanting to learn Photoshop for a long time. I was always looking for the perfect learning method but never succeeded with finding it. We have tons of books and videos, but I needed something that started with the basics so I'd understand the functionality of Photoshop.

I think I just found the perfect solution for the price of a book. We just bought Richard Harrington's "Understanding Adobe Photoshop CS4". The book combines podcasts, lesson material, CD examples, and quizzes. Norine and I are doing it together and now that we're in chapter two, I have a real good feeling that this is just what I've been looking for. We both like Richard's teaching style. We start each chapter by viewing a podcast via Apple TV while we follow along on our laptops. Then we read the materials using the sample materials provided on the CD. At the end of the chapter we take a test.

Monday, February 23, 2009

Norine is quick to tell everyone how I would never buy her a Kitchenaid mixer. It wasn't until I retired and broke her hand mixer making cookies that I realized a Kitchenaid was something we needed. I think it was the little plastic pieces in the cookies that drove home the point. She also used to tell me that we needed better quality cookware. Of course I ignored her pleas for that too.

Now cooking has become a hobby. We're starting to decide in the morning what we'd like to fix for dinner and then we head to the grocery store to get the ingredients - nice and fresh. Well, we don't do it every day, but we plan on doing it several times a week. Today we decided on Hoisin chicken, using a recipe we loved years ago, but haven't made in ages. Some of the fresh ingredients are shown in the picture.

And, you know what? Norine was right again. We need better cookware. I ordered some Anolon Advanced pans from Amazon. I can see this becoming an expensive hobby.... (and maybe I need to start listening to her).

Sunday, February 22, 2009

Tomorrow is graduation day for cardio rehab. It wasn't bad at all except for having to get up to an alarm clock. Since retiring in 2007, I've only had to use an alarm clock once or twice before last month. I started rehab going to the 1:30 sessions but it seemed to waste the entire day, so I switched to the 8 am sessions. Now I need to make sure I keep up with the exercise program. The main thing I learned is that the exercise does not have to be painful. I probably failed at exercise programs in the past because I felt I had to push myself to misery. We'll see how it goes!

Friday, February 20, 2009

Norine kept bugging me about SkyAuction's "Deal of the Day" so I finally relented and took a look at it. The deal was for a 7 night stay at the resort of your choice for $179. It's basically for a timeshare unit, anywhere in the world, based on availability. I didn't bite until I started looking at availability. Choices were somewhat slim until I started looking for dates within the next week. Suddenly there were things available everywhere.

We've been trying to plan some trips and have really struggled with finding places that have kitchen facilities at a reasonable price. This solves the problem. It's like having a timeshare without the expense of buying it and paying the annual fees.

The certificates can be used anytime in the next 16 months so I bought four. I think we'll use the first one in the next week or two!

UPDATE: We successfully booked a 2 bedroom unit with full kitchen in Steamboat Springs!

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

This morning I stopped by a self-service car wash to get the winter crud off my truck. It was a typical 25 cent car wash except it took credit cards. When I got home, I said "Why didn't I use my iPhone and take a picture of the credit card thing?". I had a great idea for a blog post.

This afternoon we stopped by the same car wash on our way home from bowling. Our car needed cleaning too. This time, I got out my iPhone and got the picture.

Now I'm home and writing the blog entry and I totally forgot the clever thing I was going to say about it. Isn't getting old so much fun? If it comes back to me, I can always come back and edit this post (if I remember it's out here).

Monday, February 9, 2009

Today is our 25th wedding anniversary! I love you Norine!!!! Very much!!!

We usually take a trip in February to celebrate our anniversary. Thisyear we didn't schedule a trip since we were planning on driving to North Carolina to see our new grand baby. It's a good thing we didn't pay for a big trip since I probably wouldn't have been able to go. See, things happen for a reason! We need to make it up with a really nice trip somewhere. After all, the 25th anniversary is a very special occasion.

We thought about going to a real nice restaurant tonight. But being the retired cheap-a-skates we are, we decided to use a 2 for 1 coupon at the Argosy buffet. That's ok, we'll make it up in a month or two when I'm ready to travel again.

I deleted my Blogger Blog last year and started a blog as part of our webpage, which we developed with iWeb. After using it for awhile, I decided that Blogger has a better interface, especially for adding photos to the posts. I also like the ability to post via email, which I'm doing with this post.